THE STRAZETTE GAZEE

Ralph Schusler was a great friend of mine at the Taft School, and he came up with the idea of a parody of an underground newspaper called The Strazette Gazzee. This is how the title came about:  Frank Strasburger was a young English Master who started the year that Ralph and I were Mids. In his very first class, which included Ralph, Mr. Strasburger instructed the class to call him "Stras," a mistake he never lived down. Ralph immediately changed it to a banshee cry, "Strazeeee!" then corrupted to "Ra-eeeee."

Over Xmas break the next year, Stras' car was ironically stranded in the snow on the Tappan Zee Bridge, so Ralph then altered it to RA-E-MATAZ, (Razmataz), and thus what any normal person would title The Strazee Gazette he logically reversed, thus The Strazette Gazee.

Strasburger was terribly popular with seniors because he was a smoker and allowed them to smoke in his apartment on the CPT 3 plateau.  Stras is shown (right photo) demonstrating the eternal flame.

Before Ralph parted ways with Taft, he published two issues of The Gazee, and here is the only surviving issue. A single copy was published and placed on the corridor bulletin board, and my job, as Ralph's buddy, was to laugh and keep the thing for posterity. 

T.S.P. stands for "Taft Secret Police,"  the fictional agency that Ralph created to describe the avuncular Dean of Students Don Oscarson and the humorless and malevolent Master Dan Comiskey ("Cominalsky Domino.")  The pair would prowl at night seeking out wrong-doers.  Master Ted Green's nickname was "Thumper," but it wasn't because he had rabbit ears.

Sanders was a guest Pastor at one of the last required Sunday afternoon church services held at the Congregational on the hill.   Walter Johnson was a new Religion teacher; Phil Zaeder was the Chaplain; and Bill Caulkins was another classmate always in trouble.  Like Ralph, he left Taft too early.

Sylvia was Phil Zaedar's wife, and it was rumored that she "got around."  Esty and Zaeder were very close, but then something happened to chill their friendship, or that's how it seemed to us.

Pure fiction.

The top story below is sadly true when Lovelace didn't even know Ralph's name.  Goodeve, subject of the second story, would visit Taft following his firing a few weeks later, when he threw a Molotov Cocktail on the rink during night practice.  No one was hurt, and Goodeve was identified as the culprit because he had used as the wick his facecloth with his name tag stitched in.  He then became a TV star.

For an index of other Taft School articles, click here.

May, 2016